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Archaeology GeoArchaeology Staff

Ethnohistory Ethnography British Museum

Introduction

This research fits three themes of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Landscape and Environment Research Programme: Authority and Access; Elements and Ecologies; Time, Space and Narrative. We propose to tackle the challenge of understanding how the Andean landscape is cognised, lived in, modified and managed. The study focuses on a key cultural element in the Inca Empire - the ushnu, an ingenious architectural construction invested with profound symbolic significance and deployed by the Incas to appropriate and transform newly conquered subject territories. We propose to decipher the rationale underlying the location and function of these structures in the landscape at the geographical heart of the Inca state, thereby reconstructing and explaining a distinctive Native American cultural ecology. This entails a multi-disciplinary research programme, drawing on expertise from the humanities and natural sciences, namely cultural geography, ethnography, ethnohistory, archaeology, geoarchaeology, spatial analysis and museology. We have planned an integrated study that combines an innovative theoretical framework with practical approaches exploring, testing and developing our knowledge and understanding of landscape and environment. An enterprising collaboration between universities and museums, both in the UK and Peru, will promote dissemination of the findings to worldwide academic and non-academic audiences.

Research Questions

1. How were the symbolic and practical functions of ushnus combined to exert control over the Inca imperial territories?
2. What factors govern ushnu distribution in the landscape? How are they associated with other cultural and natural landscape elements, such as irrigation canals and agricultural terraces, roads, settlements, topography, hydrology and soils? Is the visibility of prominent natural (sacred?) landscape features a significant factor in their location?
3. What are the regularities in their architecture and orientation? Is there a hierarchy of ushnus; can a formal typology be developed?
4. How were ushnus constructed, what do they comprise and what relationships with the surrounding landscape and environment can be demonstrated?
5. What artefacts are found on, around and within ushnus; what can these tell us about activities and ritual practices?
6. How do present-day local communities perceive and use ushnus?

Research Context

Ushnu is a Quechua term that encompasses the idea of a restricted, sanctified space reserved for use by the Inca king and Incas-by-privilege. This concept found material expression in a hierarchy of forms ranging from conspicuous, stone-faced stepped pyramids and platforms in the central plazas of regional administrative centres, to smaller constructions placed at prominent points in the landscape. Eyewitness accounts, ethnohistorical records, and archaeological data provide the primary sources of information on the symbolic and practical importance of ushnus (e.g. Guaman Poma de Ayala, in Murra et al., 1980; Zuidema, 1982, 1989, 2002; Meddens, 1997; Pino Matos, 2004). When the Inca (or a provincial lord as his representative) stood on this platform, he affirmed the supremacy of the Inca state and its divine authority to rule. These platforms served as public stages to conduct ceremonies announcing the timing of planting and harvest within the agricultural calendar using prestigious objects such as qeros (drinking vessels for toasting and libations). They were also used for redistributive rituals enacted as shows of public generosity to bind the people to their rulers, and occasionally to make offerings of sets of miniature pottery vessels and metal figurines.

The concept of a sacred, central space is integral to the process of archaic state formation in the Andes (Stanish, 2001).  Initially such spaces were embedded within the architectural precincts of ceremonial centres such as Chavin de Huantar (Early Horizon; 800BC-200AD) and Tiwanaku (Middle Horizon; 200 – 800 AD). We are hypothesising that the hallmark of Inca imperial strategy was to deploy ushnus as pragmatic instruments of administrative control over subject populations and resources, and to assure the effective incorporation of new territories into the rapidly expanding empire.

The best-known surviving ushnus are conspicuous at all main settlements and administrative centres on the royal roads (Capac Ñan), and at nodal points in the wider environment. This great arterial network was fashioned to enhance the productive capacity of the landscape and to regulate the flow of key commodities. Nevertheless, there is a remarkable dearth of information on the form, function and context of ushnus themselves. Our study area embraces two vital stretches of the Inca highway and the adjacent hinterland in the Peruvian Central Highlands. Here at Vilcashuáman lies one of the most impressive and best preserved ushnus on the system of roads marking the nexus between the main East-West road connecting the capital Cusco with the Pacific coast, and the great South-North highway linking the northern frontier with the Inca heartland. Our selection of this area is based on an appreciation of the rapidity with which the Inca Empire expanded to embrace an enormous territory in little more than 150 years.  We believe the best chance of studying the archaeological footprint of the Inca presence in, and control of, its imperial domain is at and close to the main centre of expansion.   

Among the measures employed by the Incas to ensure sustainable agricultural productivity was the construction of impressive irrigated agricultural terraces to improve the fertility of the land. This often entailed the physical movement of large quantities of selected soils from one location to another to boost agricultural potential of otherwise unpromising land, e.g. on the Island of the Sun on Lake Titicaca. Our British Academy (2004) funded pilot project entailed an archaeological, geoarchaeological and GIS-based study of the spatial relationships between ushnus, landscape and settlements, and revealed for the first time that some ushnus are composedof alternating ‘couplets’ of topsoil and subsoil deliberately brought in from other locations, thus giving physical expression to the intimate connection between the ushnu, the surrounding agricultural landscape and the local populace that worked it. These empirical data corroborate ethnohistorical accounts that highlight the important role of ritual in Andean agricultural activities to ensure the success of crops. The processes involved in constructing ushnus, as well as the ritual activities carried out on and around them, appear to be highly significant elements in promoting agricultural productivity and sustainability.
 

We contend that ushnus were a vital tool in Inca imperial practice and integral to the social, political and economic wellbeing of the diverse ethnic groups that were progressively incorporated into the empire. Our study will contribute significant new insights by documenting the nature and extent of these kinds of landscape interventions as an indispensable aspect of imperial appropriation and enhancement of the productive potential of conquered territories.  It will offer the first objective evidence of the way in which the symbolic and economic functions of ushnus were combined, effectively forming complementary aspects of imperial control. The results will contribute a substantive new body of original theory, data and interpretation to Andean research and provide a sound conceptual basis for comparing imperial strategies devised and implemented elsewhere.

Meddens, F.M. 1997 Function and meaning of the Uusnu in Late Horizon Peru. Tawantinsuyu 3, 5-14.
Murra J., V., Rolena, A. and Jorge, L. (eds.) 1980 Guaman Poma de Ayala, F. 1583-1615, El Primer Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno.

Pino Matos, J.L. 2004 El usnu Inka y la organización del Espacio en los principales tampus de los Wamani de la Sierra Central del Chinchaysuyu, Chungará. Revista de Antropología Chilena 36, 303-311.

Stanish, C. 2001 The origin of state societies in South America, Annual Review of Anthropology 30, 41-64. 

Zuidema, R.T. 1982 Bureaucracy and systematic knowledge in Andean civilisation: In: Collier, G.A., Rosaldo, R.I. and Wirth, J.D. (eds.) The Inka and Aztec States 1400-1800, 419-458. Studies in Anthropology Academic Press.

Zuidema, R.T. 1989 El usnu. In : Burga, M. (ed.) Reyes y Guerreros, Ensayos de Cultura Andina, Grandes Estudios Andinos, 402-454.

Zuidema, R.T. 2002 Inca religion: its foundations in the Central Andean context. In: Sullivan, L.E. (ed.), Native Religions and Cultures of Central and South America, 236-253.